A smart home environment is created at a venue by integrating a plurality of smart devices, including intelligent, multi-sensing, network-connected electronic devices, seamlessly with each other in a local area network and/or with a central server or a cloud-computing system to provide a variety of useful smart home functions. Nowadays, network-connected video surveillance cameras have been extensively used in the smart home environment to provide video monitoring and security. Such extensive usage of video cameras in residential and commercial environments has increased substantially, in part due to lower prices and simplicity of deployment.
Sometimes, one or more of the smart devices are located in an outdoor environment (e.g., in a porch or a backyard of a house). For example, one or more network-connected cameras are often installed on an outer wall of a house, and configured to provide video monitoring and security in the outdoor environment. These smart devices (e.g., the network-connected outdoor cameras) are exposed to severe weather conditions (e.g., a rainfall, a snowstorm and direct sun exposure), and require additional power supplies being physically routed to them even though these smart device normally can communicate data with a remote server or a client device wirelessly via one or more communication networks. Each outdoor smart device must be configured to attach firmly to a surface in the outdoor environment, have an access to a power supply source, function reliably under various severe weather conditions (e.g., water intrusion from a rainfall or snowstorm) that could happen, and last for a long duration in the outdoor environment. As such, there is a need to mechanically mount a smart device to an outdoor surface in a compact and robust manner and with a convenient access to a power supply source, while incorporating into the smart device some resistance mechanisms against potential severe weather conditions.